Alone
by jraver1964
Summary: A man wakes up and there are no people left. a blue collar guy's depiction of what he would do.


DAY ONE

"Aww fuck!!!" John yelled as he woke up to a dark house. "Late for work" he thought as he stared at his black lifeless alarm clock he realized the power must have gone out…his watch said 6:02 a.m. John was literally never late for work and he was highly annoyed ,he was due at work at 6 a.m.. Tammy his wife of 17 years was not beside him in the bed which just made him mad as hell that she didn't wake him up before she left for work. Not her fault really ,since the economy took a downturn he had managed to sell his money losing business but the only job he could find was at Wally World and the schedule was sporadic at best. She would really have no way to know he was working in the morning since they had not discussed his schedule this week, but he decided to blame it on her anyhow.

Although he was only making just over minimum wage at his job he was the type that takes a job very seriously and waking up late is not acceptable. He hurried out of bed and headed to the shower, like a dumbass he hit the light switch, once he entered the shower he found that there was no hot water left. Living in Florida does have the benefit of even the cold water being kinda warm. At forty five John was not exactly happy about where he was in life. He tried his best to not let his low paying job or his failure in business get him down although at times it did. He hurriedly brushed his teeth and got dressed for work. as he was running through the house he didn't see any of the pets that are usually underfoot. His wife has three cats and two dogs and he didn't see one of them as he ran out the front door…but this barely registered in his consciousness. When he got to his driveway he was surprised to see Tammy's car still sitting there. She must be out walking the dogs he thought. John simply opened the door and let the dogs out. but Tammy was a very proper rule abiding person who took them out on a leash . He hopped into his old astro van and pulled out of the driveway.

He tuned the radio to the npr news station in the hopes of hearing some news about the blackout. Nothing but static on npr and every other station "wish I would have brought the satellite radio" he thought. It is eight miles one way to the Wally World John works at. He loved the location because it was far enough away from home that he didn't have to suffer the embarrassment of seeing his neighbors at his low paying job. The main thoroughfare in his city of Cape Coral is called Del Prado blvd. as he pulled onto Del Prado there was no traffic, not unusual for this time of the day on a Sunday. As he drove along in the total darkness he noticed up ahead what looked like a car that drove straight into a telephone pole. The lights were still on and a lot of smoke was coming from the front of the car. John considered himself a tough guy but the thought of walking up to a car and seeing a person with a steering column thru their chest and their faced smashed like a bug on the windshield made him feel queasy inside. plus he was late for work. His first thought was to just keep driving and call 911 but in the back of his head he heard Tammy saying "John you gotta help them". He dialed 911 on his cell phone and to his surprise there was no signal. With a heavy sigh he pulled up beside the smashed car, he slowly got out of his van…he knew what he was about to see, judging by the damage to the car, was going to be gory at best, downright gruesome at worst. John had always been the type to help others though, so with Tammy yelling at him in his head to help them, he walked closer to the mangled car. As he came within about six feet of the car, He could see the airbags had deployed. As he came closer he could not see the driver, his first thought was that maybe they had been ejected from the impact.

Steeling himself for the worse he took the final few steps to the car and peered inside. There was no one inside. The windshield although shattered was still intact. looking closer he saw that the steering column had gone thru the front seat…no one could have walked away from this crash. He saw no blood or gore.

They must have been thrown thru the side window he thought. again he pulls out his cell phone and dials 911...again no signal. He looks around the area and up and down the street but sees no bodies. The police have already been here he thinks. Maybe with the power out the tow trucks are too busy to keep up. He walks back to his van and starts again on his way to work. He checks his phone again but still no signal. he wanted to call his wife and tell her about the wreck and discuss the power outage. A mile down the road there were several more cars off the side of the road….some just sitting there idling, others crashed into things. Once again he got out and investigated the wrecks…again no drivers…no passengers…no nothing. Just empty wrecked cars or empty idling cars. the silence surrounding him at each crash site was unsettling. He was very puzzled by this but his work ethic made him get back in the van and continue on to work. During the last 4 miles he sees no less than 10 more abandoned cars.

As he pulls into the parking lot of Wally World the lights are out and the parking lot is eerily silent. as he exits his van he hears nothing…no cars no buzz of neon no nothing. There are several employees cars in the lot that he recognizes. Wally World is a 24 hour store so on the days John works 6 -3 he has gotten to know the overnight crew that work till 8 a.m. Wait until I tell them about all the abandoned and wrecked cars he thinks to himself. As he leaves the van and walks towards the store the blackness and silence are surreal. It is reassuring seeing so many familiar vehicles as he walks to the front door. Once he arrived at the front doors of the store he stood waiting for them to open, he realized that with no electric that wasn't going to happen. Odd how a person gets so used to electricity that when it is out, common sense seems to go with it . after waiting a second longer then what he would consider intelligent he realizes he must pull the doors apart. As he enters the store it is pitch black inside, there is no light coming from the outside and no light inside. With the hairs rising on the back of his neck he ventures a few feet inside the store. "HELLO!!!" HELLO!!" "ANYONE HERE?". Nothing but silence. He walks a few feet further into the store. The feeling of being in a cold dark cave is nearly overwhelming. He stops and again calls out "HELLO!! HELLO!!" no response nothing but silence nothing but utter and complete darkness. Ok this is just freaking weird he thinks. "Wally World is the most theft conscious company in the world, They have cameras covering every square inch of the store and yet here I stand a few feet into a completely unlocked unattended store." "What the fuck is going on!!" He pulls out his cell phone again and checks for a signal. still nothing, but the light glow from the phone is reassuring. "Ok" he thinks "THINK!!" what to do now. he wanders a bit further in the store but it is pitch black ,there is no sound, no refrigeration running, no people talking, no registers ringing…there is nothing. He walks back out front and sits down at the employee break table. "What the fuck is going on!!" he wonders to himself. All of these employee cars, yet no one is inside. It is approaching 7 am and the sun is just now starting to lighten the sky as he looks down the street he sees lights on at the Publix grocery store. He decides to ride down there and see if they have power or if they are running on a generator. At this point he will be happy just to see another person.

As he pulls into the parking lot of the Publix everything looks normal, there were a few cars in the parking lot and all the lights were on in the store. He parks the van, gets out and heads to the front doors of the store. There does not appear to be any movement inside but this is not unusual at this time of day. Once he gets to the front doors he feels a sense of relief as the doors slide open,"ok everything is normal here" he thinks. He walks into the store and hears the reassuring sounds of refrigeration running. There are no cashiers at the registers but the store just opened a little while earlier and he thought maybe the cashiers were straightening the aisles or something. John had been a meat cutter most of his life and he knew the meat guys would be back in the meat room hacking up the dead things as he liked to say, so he headed back to the meat room. he didn't see anyone during the entire walk to the back of the store. To his surprise not only was there no one in the meat room but one of the meat saws was running and there was meat on the cutting tables. He walked over to the deli and still not a soul around. Again there were signs of people being there recently, lunch meat sitting in the slicer, salads lying open on the counter. John was not the type of person to freak out in odd or emergency situations but this was taking him right close to that point. He walked up to the bakery and looked behind the counter….no one there either. Someone had been there recently as well, donuts sitting on a table waiting to be packaged, oven door standing open with what appeared to be bread dough ready to cook, another oven running with what appeared to be large lumps of charcoal inside, he assumed it was burnt bread. "What the fuck is going on?" he thought. He started walking back to the exit on his way by the cash registers he noticed one of the drawers open with cash in the till that he had not seen when he entered, "ok this has to be some kind of really weird dream" he thinks to himself.

As he exit's the store he looks out to College Parkway a relatively busy road in Lee County and there is not a car moving. John has an overwhelming urge to run to his van but he fights the urge and walks at a faster then normal pace to the van. "Ok I gotta settle down" he thinks as he fights the panic that is rising inside of him. As he gets into the van the comfort of a familiar surrounding calms his nerves a bit. Starting the van he realizes he has no idea where to go from here. The sun is up now so he decides to ride back over to Wally World to see if anyone else has showed up. He pulls into the parking lot and parks in his usual spot in the back. As he walks toward the store he notices a shopping cart full of groceries sitting next to a car with an open trunk. He hadn't seen that in the dark when he was here earlier. It looked as if someone just stopped loading their car and simply walked away. "This is one strange dream" he thought to himself. He was becoming convinced this was just a crazy dream that he would awake from any second. He reentered the store only to find no signs of life again, he could see a little better with the sunlight coming in from the front windows, like the Publix there were signs of recent activity ,racks of bread waiting to be packaged in the bakery, a cart full of stock half worked on the cereal aisle and a few shopping carts half full just sitting there. All the signs of people just no people…no movement and unlike Publix no generator here so there is nothing but complete silence. The silence more then anything else was very unsettling to John. John was torn between staying at work waiting to see if anyone showed up and going home to find his wife, he was starting to worry something was terribly wrong, unless of course this really was just all a strange dream. After a moment's thought he decided to head home to look for Tammy. As he walked back across the parking lot to his van he noticed a few birds flying overhead, for some reason this gave him a great sense of relief. Just seeing another living thing for the first time today was somehow reassuring.

John climbed back into his van and lit up a cigarette to calm his nerves, to say he is a heavy smoker would be an understatement. He realizes it is his last cigarette and decides to try one of the little convenience stores on Del Prado on his way home to buy some more. Small business owners tend to stay at work even when the power is out ,they can do cash transaction and these days every sale counts. He put the van in gear and drove the 2 miles to the Indian owned store he frequented often. There are 2 cars in the parking lot which he is learning doesn't mean a whole lot but it still gives him hope that someone may be inside. The store has no lights on and he sees no movement as he parks the van in front of the doors. As he walks into the store he is greeted with complete silence but the daylight is lighting the place up fairly well. John walks up to the counter hoping that someone will pop up to wait on him. After standing there for a few seconds he realizes that isn't going to happen. He can see the cartons of Marlboro behind the counter but the only way to get to them would be to walk around and behind the counter. He could see the headline now "Cape Coral Man Shot for Looting" This was truly a dilemma for John. He can hear Tammy's voice saying "you can't go back there John" "it is wrong". Finally he decided to leave $60. Bucks on the counter and walk back and grab a carton, he carefully looked around honestly fearing the owner or a national guardsman was going to pop up and shoot him. He ran behind the counter and grabbed a carton off the shelf then ran back to the front of the counter. Standing, waiting, for what he did not know, he felt like he should leave a note or something. just walking out didn't seem right even though he has placed the money on the counter. Finally he resigns himself to leave. Peering carefully out the front door looking for cops or national guard troops waiting to shoot him ,he slowly exit's the store. Much to his relief he makes it back to his van without being shot. Lighting another cigarette he starts the van and heads home. Hoping that Tammy's car is gone when he gets there.

There is nothing moving on the way back home, going north some of the wrecked cars were in the middle of the road so he had to drive around them several times. Each car he passed had no occupants alive or dead. there was no blood or body parts, just cars sitting empty. As he turned onto his street he could clearly see Tammy's car sitting in the driveway, Tammy does not miss work so this was not a good sign at all. John pulled into his driveway and got out of the van. He just stood there for a few seconds listening for sounds of life. Other then the birds there was nothing. No neighbors moving about, no cars riding by, there was simply nothing. As he walked by Tammy's car he placed his hand on the hood to see if it was warm to the touch, it was cool and still covered in dew. He walked into the house only to find the silence he has yet to become accustomed to. The house is closed up tight because it is mid July in SW Florida and it is already starting to heat up inside. "Tammy!!!" John literally yells at the top of his lungs. "Tammy!!!" he yells again…well he would call it a yell but anyone else hearing it would call it a nervous high pitched scream ,no answer just the silence. No dogs coming to greet him, no cats chasing each other thru the house. "ok this is freaking me the fuck out" he says aloud. Sara his daughter is out of town attending a wedding so he is not overly concerned for her at the moment. Tammy on the other hand is greatly worrying him. "Where could she be?" he asks himself. John grew up with a fanatically religious mother and he could hear her now saying this was the rapture, which meant only sinners were left on the earth. John doubted seriously that he was the only sinner in Cape Coral though. So the rapture is out. Nuclear bomb is out no devastation, no melted stuff. Besides he was relatively sure a nuclear blast would wake him. This thought made him smile to himself. He had never heard of any kind of weapon that completely erases people, clothing and all, but leaves buildings and cars intact. He does not know of any biological stuff that makes people disappear. So for the moment he has to assume everyone is alive somewhere until he can think of a better explanation.

John takes a seat on his sofa in the silence and thinks about what to do next. He decides to look around the neighborhood for Tammy first off. Maybe she just got to yapping with a neighbor and lost track of time. He walks outside and decides to walk over to his neighbor's Tom and Deanna's house. Their house is closed up tight, which is usually their way of saying "don't bother us". John decides to knock on the door anyhow to see if Tammy is inside chatting with them. Knocking loudly he waits for an answer but gets the silence that is fast becoming the norm. Their dog Jordan is not barking at him as usual. He tries the doorknob and finds the door unlocked. As he enters he calls out ". Tom, Deanna anyone home?" silence. He walks into the kitchen and finds half eaten breakfast plates on the counter. Ok so the neighbors have gone somewhere too. He walks back to the van thinking he will drive around the immediate neighborhood looking for Tammy. Then he remembers the satellite radio in Tammy's car and decides to take her car and maybe tune into some national news to find out what is going on. John Starts the car and starts adjusting the radio. "Static every damn channel is static! how is this possible" he thinks. John drives slowly around several blocks of the neighborhood but finds no signs of Tammy, no signs of human life for that matter. As he drives slowly back home for the first time he is truly scared. He can think of no explanation for what is happening. John pulls back into the driveway and heads back into the house.

"Now what?" he asks himself. He walks into the kitchen and checks the clock on the oven it reads 4:25. The power has been out for several hours already. He decides to take care of practical matters instead of just sitting around waiting for an answer to what was happening. First he opens up the windows and doors to try to keep the house cooler. Living in Florida, nearly everyone has a generator and emergency supplies in the garage in case of a hurricane. John was no exception to this. He heads out to the garage to start setting up the generator and get his refrigerators plugged in. There are 7 5 gallon gas cans in the garage but John only has gas in 2 of them. He sets up the generator outside the garage door and runs the extension cords into the house. The generator can run both of his refrigerators, a window air conditioner, a laptop and a lamp. After setting everything up but the air conditioner, he grabs a beer from the fridge and sits down in front of his computer. Literally crossing his fingers he clicks on the internet explorer icon. "Page cannot be loaded" "damn!!" he says out loud. It is the middle of the day and the house is getting uncomfortably warm but he resisted getting the air conditioner out thinking the power would be on any minute.

John heads to the bedroom and puts on a pair of shorts and heads for the pool to cool off and think. "If the power is not on by tomorrow afternoon " he thinks " I will have to go find more gas and set up the window ac unit" As he sits and ponders his situation he realizes he may have to make some long term plans while waiting for everyone to return. The list of needs for a simple week long power outage is running long in his head and he thinks that anything longer then that would require a whole different thought process. "What if they never come back?" he thinks. Food would be plentiful the first year or so but after that it would start to rot on the grocery shelves. "There is no way that I will be alone for a year or so "he thinks. For the time being he decided to settle on shorter term things until he figures out what is going on. "Tomorrow I will ride out to the airport. Surely they will have flights coming and going there" "If no one is at the airport then I will make some short term arrangements for gas and food on the way back" John climbs out of the pool after sitting in it for about an hour or so. After drying off he heads inside to use the bathroom. After he finishes with the toilet he flushes and notices it is not filling back up with water. He turns and tries the faucet in the shower…nothing. "Just fucking great!!" he says out loud "now I have no water? I'll just have to add that to the freaking list too!!"

Several hours and several beers later John is sitting on the back porch playing games on his laptop killing time. He had shut the generator down for the time being so he might be able to hear any signs of life; the generator makes a lot of noise. Right after dark John had noticed several areas of the skyline were lit up with a reddish orange glow. The smell of smoke was heavy in the air. "must be a lot of houses on fire" John thinks If people all over the county just vanished or walked away from whatever they were doing that would leave a lot of frying pans cooking unattended, cigarettes dropped from hands , cars driven into houses or buildings. The list of potential fire starting situations would be long enough to cause a fire marshal to have a stroke. Yet there was not one siren, not one flashing light, just the silence of the night. Fortunately there did not appear to be anything burning close to his house. John had thought about going to see what was burning but could not bring himself to leave the safe feeling of his home and venture out into the dark night.

The entire day he had had a fear burning in the back of his consciousness that now seemed to be moving to the front. He was extremely tired but as much as he hated to admit it, he was afraid to go to sleep. "If I do go to sleep and dream of a Randall Flagg I will personally go find Steven King and kill him." he thought to himself. He couldn't think of anything in particular that he was afraid of; He just had a feeling of fear plain and simple. John realized that the dogs would have giving him a sense of safety had they been here to stand guard and bark at moving grass as they had always done in the past. This thought made him smile. He had yelled at the dogs for years to stop barking and now he longed for that very sound. "One more beer" He thought.

DAY TWO

John awoke with a laptop stuck to his face. As he raised his head he saw ten or twelve empty beer bottles on the table. Apparently he had drank until he simply slumped over onto his laptop and passed out. "Tammy!!!" John yelled at the top of his lungs. Nothing, just silence. John checks his watch 7:45. He groggily stands up and heads to the bathroom. Stopping to hit the light switch, and waiting for the light to come on. Tammy had switched all the bulbs in the house to the fluorescent type which takes a second to come on. "Fucking idiot" he called himself as he walked to the toilet. When he was finished he stood up and pushed the handle to flush. Nothing happened. "Damn it to hell!!" he said out loud "I have to get my shit together" At this he actually broke out into laughter "technically my shit is together "he thought "The problem is what to do with it?" He grabs the little waste can from beside the toilet and goes out to the pool to fill it up with water. John dumps the water into the toilet bowl and the toilet flushes. "I doubt I can do that for long before it backs up into the house" he thinks. His knowledge of how sewers work is lacking but he feels that would be the most likely outcome of flushing like this. John goes out to the garage to grab a gallon of water. Back in the bathroom he uses the water to brush his teeth and wash his face and body. After getting dressed John thinks to himself "clothing won't be a problem if this is a long term thing, there are literally hundreds of stores full of clothes". Tammy would be happy at the thought of never doing laundry again. Although she would say it was wasteful.

After going outside and starting up the generator, John cooked a bacon and egg breakfast using the side burner on his gas grill. He was never a big breakfast eating kind of guy but thought the food would help clear the remaining cobwebs from his head and give him more energy for what was probably going to be a very long day. He had decided to make a "to do" list for the day. He wanted to go out to the airport to see if there were any signs of life there. So that was first on his list.

1. Go to airport.

2. Find gas.

3. Find a solution for the toilet problem.

4. Stock up on food and water.

5. Go to the Cape Coral emergency operation center.

6. First aid supplies.

7. Go to Wally World and get a Wilson soccer ball, paint a face on it and talk to it.

John thought if any government officials knew something was going to happen maybe they headed for the E.O.C. It was a fairly new building that was designed to withstand a hurricane. Whatever has happened certainly wasn't anything like a hurricane but perhaps the building offered some protection from whatever happened? If people did not start returning soon, John knew he would have a much longer list. The thought of it just boggles his mind. He carries his dishes to the sink and decides to get started with his day.

John began loading up the van with gas cans and tools he thought he may need during the day, and then threw in his chainsaw just in case a need for that arose. As John climbed into the van he noticed that the smell of smoke was not as strong as it was last night. Scanning the skyline he could see billows of smoke rising in the distance in nearly every direction he looked. John fiddled with the radio as he drove down the street, still nothing. The drive to the airport takes about 30 minutes or so, as John drove he looked for signs of life, there were none. He decided to drive past the Wally World to see if anything had moved since yesterday. John didn't even bother to pull into the parking lot of Wally World, He could see the cart beside the car had not moved and neither had any of the cars. As he continued on his way to the airport, he kept stopping at each traffic light, when the power is out, traffic lights are to be treated as four way stop signs. After several of these stops he began to feel stupid stopping time after time, he was the only moving car on the road. "Well" He thinks to himself "I would feel more stupid if I ran thru a traffic light and hit the only other living person in the county" So he continued on his way stopping at every traffic signal.

John turned onto the service road leading to the airport. It was a tree lined curvy road so he could not see the terminal right away, The smell of smoke was much heavier here and he could see a huge column of smoke about where the terminal would be. As John rounded the last curve he slammed on the brakes. Ahead of him the terminal or what was left of it was engulfed in flames, John was horrified to see the front nose of a jet sticking out of the front of the building. There were no fire trucks, no police cars and no E.M.S.. The reality of his situation hit him like a baseball bat in the face. This was an international airport; flights came here from all over the country and several foreign countries as well. Yet it is burning to the ground without any attempts to put out the fire or rescue the survivors. John knew that this meant he was alone, even if the local government could not respond to this emergency he knew the federal government would have responded quickly, there would be national media covering the story as well, there was literally no one here. John climbed out of the van and dropped to his knees in despair. He lowered himself to a sitting position and just stared at the burning building, even at this distance the heat was fairly intense and the fire appeared to be dying down. He could not imagine how hot it must have been when it was fully engaged in flames. John sat there alone in the middle of the road, apparently alone in the world. Tears started running down his cheeks. John sat there for hours as he watched what represented to him the last hope for humanity burn to the ground.

Finally he slowly stood up and climbed back into his van. "Time to get on with living" he thinks to himself. He pulls his 'to do' list from his pocket and slowly crosses off item one. "Ok item two find gas" He thinks to himself. The BJ's club in Cape Coral has a huge generator in the parking lot of the gas station and he is hoping that the one here in Fort Myers also has one since he is closer to that one. John pulls into the parking lot of BJ's a few minutes later and is relieved to hear the generator running. He pulls up beside a pump gets out of the van and swipes his credit card, "authorizing" blinks on the screen. "Transaction Denied" flashes on the screen next. "So much for this being easy" He thinks. John glances over at the little booth where the clerk usually sits and sees the door is closed. "Locked too, no doubt" He thinks. He walks over and tries the door and is surprised when it easily opens. John is no longer worried about the police or national guardsmen shooting him, "if they are letting plane wrecks go, I doubt they are worried about me stealing gas." He thinks. He enters the booth and looks down at the keyboards for the computer. One of them apparently controls the gas pumps so he studies it for a bit. He punches the pump two key then enters $100, for the amount. He walks back to the van , inserts the pump and starts pumping. "Fucking A!!" He yells out loud as the gas begins to flow. The van holds twenty seven gallons of gas and is nearly empty. After filling the van and a few gas cans he had to go back to the booth and enter in another $100. "Damn high gas prices!" he mutters as he walks back to the van to finish filling his tanks. Once he was done he opened all the windows in the van to keep the fumes from getting to strong. He walked over to the generator to look for a gas gauge; he was going to be burning up a lot of gas from now on with the generator at home. He couldn't find a gas gauge or a gas tank so he hoped that it drew its fuel directly from the underground tanks. It would run for quite some time if that were the case, hopefully the underground tanks were close to full. John got back into the van, pulled out his list and crossed off item two. Instead of completing the rest of his list right away he decided to drop the gas off at home first, the fumes were pretty pungent in the van already. It was a twenty minute ride home, John decided it would be wise to try and go without a cigarette for the ride. Slowly he drove out of the lot and headed for home. In the back of his mind he was hoping Tammy would be there when he arrived.

8


End file.
